Political scientistMatthias Küntzel recalls the reactions in the West Ã¢â¬â from helplessness to admiration Ã¢â¬â to the Iranian revolution under Ayatollah Khomeini and wonders why European politicians are so slow to learn when it comes to Iran. "In June 2006, Javier Solana, emissary of the six powers, proposed to the regime 'a new relationship on the basis of mutual respect and trust' in almost the exact same words that Jimmy Carter, shortly after the hostage-taking, made the friendly but absurd offer of a 'new and mutually advantageous partnership.' Tehran responded to this fawning in its own particular way: one day before Solana arrived, it expanded its uranium enrichment programme."

A discussion is going on in the UK about whether the goverment should make reparation payments to descendents of slaves. After all, the British profited enormously from teh slave trade. Historian James Walvin describes the dilemma (only online): "The history of slavery is not dead and gone. On both sides of the Atlantic, the sense of grievance and communal hurt among the descendants of slaves is profoundÃ¢â¬âmore than most white people realise. Although the reparations debate is sustained by that mood, it has more specific origins. The post-1948 settlements between Germany and Israel form an obvious starting point, but so too is the widespread awareness that in 1833 the British parliament compensated slave owners to the tune of a massive 20 million pounds for the loss of their slaves. Not a penny was paid to the enslaved."

Putin may not be a flawless democrat, but his government's track record is positive, writes Roger Köppel: "In retrospect it's perhaps a miracle that it never came to the development many people thought possible: that Russia could degenerate into a sort of Weimar Republic, with all the difficulties that entails. To understand Moscow's success, you have to bear in mind the example of Yugoslavia. And the case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky is instructive as far as Putin bashing goes. The oligarch, who people in the West liked to cast as a dove, was in fact a cut-throat businessman who managed to buy up his oil empire thanks to official toleration and dubious rock-bottom prices, and who was not exactly pussy-footed in dealing with competitors. Above all, however, he trod on Putin's toes when he bribed Duma members to secure a position of power countervailing that of the president. Putin had to stop Khodorkovsky. What was wrong was the way he did it, the show trial and heavy-handed stripping of the corporate group."

Adam Gopnik has been rummaging through novels and digging up the best descriptions of food and the best recipes Ã¢â¬â while trying a few himself. "These days, we have long cooking sequences in Ian McEwan; endless recipes in James Hamilton-Paterson; menus analyzed at length in John Lanchester; and detailed culinary scenes involving Robert B. ParkerÃ¢â¬â¢s bruiser of a detective, Spenser. Cooking is to our literature what sex was to the writing of the sixties and seventies, the thing worth stopping the story for to share, so to speak, with the reader."

John Cassidy offers a portrait of former political advisor to George W. Bush, deputy foreign minister and neocon, who supported the Irak invasion: Paul Wolfowitz. Since 2005, he's been head of the World Bank and is very controversial there Ã¢â¬â particularly for his position that corrupt regimes should not be entitled to payments by the World Bank.

HistorianGerd Koenentakes his review of the posthumously published diaries of the murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya (more) as an opportunity to describe the current situation in Russia and the danger in which all regime critics find themselves. "The question of what those in power fear can be answered much as it was in the Soviet Union: not a couple of old men and women; not the few journalists and human rights activists whose influence is minimal and restricted to Internet publication; and not the handful of young men and women who sporadically charge the state organs with a crazy ideological mix of national bolshevism and anarchism, expressed in desperate banter. The gentlemen in the Kremlin are much more concerned that it will become clear to what extent their seemingly invulnerable power is built on social quicksand."

Johann Hari reviews a series of books on Islam in Europe, from Ayaan Hirsi Ali's "The Caged Virgin" to Bruce Bawer's "While Europe Slept," and points out a serious mistake in the thinking of multiculturalists. "Multiculturalism has worked on the assumption that there is one 'pure' Islam, represented by elderly mullahs. Now that Islam is splitting into liberal and literalist wings, this approach places European states closer to the reactionaries than to the feminists and liberals. We will have to ensure there are no more state-funded Muslim-only schools and youth clubs, no more privileged status for reactionary clerics. 'It must,' Bawer notes, 'become impossible for children growing up in Western Europe to be raised to see their religious affiliation as the be-all and end-all of their identity.'"

Just in time for spring, Folio has gotten romantic: it's about marriage. JournalistShobha Deconsiders the good old arranged marriage to be the model for the future in an India that's uncertain about women's emancipation. "Men in Asian societies are not equipped for rejection. For centuries they've been told that the world Ã¢â¬â and women Ã¢â¬â belong to them. They needed only to snap their fingers and point: that's my bride. Bingo. And the chosen one would gush with thankfulness. 'Dream on, boys,' is what they're getting back today. 'You aren't the right one.' That's a massive cultural change that men are having to really chew on. And at this point, mummy comes into play. She's become the chief negotiator, she's the agent in relationship questions. And young men are totally relieved that she's there."

Luca Turin thinks that Guerlain wouldn't be offering the "probably best" perfume in the world had it not been obliged to adapt to new EU regulations. "Then some in-house people refused to mess with the formula and walked out, at which point Guerlain brought in the great Edouard Flechier to fix the problem. He appears to have worked on it for a couple of years. Two days ago I got the new stuff, and it gives me great pleasure to report that Flechier has done the impossible. The new Mitsouko conforms to all the rules and smells sensational, ever so slightly different, more bread-like up top, a touch less sweet below and with a slightly stronger iris note in the middle. If I had to choose between the old and the new, regardless of habit, I might pick the new. Bravo."

Paris mayorBertrand Delanoe is up against a strong headwinds thanks to his traffic policy which has been subject to much attack since January, when Liberation ran an article on it with the headline "The destruction of Paris." Now Le Monde and filmmakerClaude Lanzmann are bewailing the situation in a wonderfully offended (and unwittingly funny) article on the "ecologisation" of Paris Ã¢â¬â in particular, the introduction of bus lanes. "If you drive along the Boulevard Saint-Germain towards Boulevard Saint-Michel and try to turn right in the Rue de Seine or the Odeon , you'll find yourself risking your life: aided by the gray lane next to the normal driving one, taxis fly by on green and prevent others from turning. If you try nonetheless, the chances are good that you'll be rammed into at high speed. Nor are pedestrians safe. I walked by mistake on the checker-painted cement, on the hopscotch, the latest foible of these ecological chubby cheeks and didn't know whether and whither I should go and who might protect me. I'm not the only one." We've always known: life in Saint-Germain des Pres is dangerous!

In an interview on the second part of his much-discussed Muhammad biography, Arabist Hans Jansen calls the cultural criticism of young Muslims "half-baked": "Recently I spoke with two Salafis, young Islam dogmatists, and they sounded very sensible. There's just one problem: they don't have a solution. I can only agree with their criticism of things related to sexuality, and the over-sexualisation of advertising. But stoning women and men doesn't help. They are also right in finding fault with the increasing commercialisation of our social welfare system. But doing away with pensions altogether won't get us any further. In this regard I see myself as a successor to Karel van het Reve. The communists were certainly right in criticising capitalist society, but they didn't have a solution. And it's the same with radical Muslims."

Gabriella Mecucci looks back on the Venice Biennale of 1977, which was dedicated to dissent and dissidents. With discussions on the reform of communism and an exhibition of samizdat literature, the Biennale became the most important cultural event of the 1970s, and grounds for considerable tension with the USSR. "Riccardo Manzini convened Biennale director Carlo Ripa di Meana and gave him a talking to: 'Honoured president, your decision has resulted in a serious worsening of relations with the USSR. Nikita Rijov (the Russian ambassador) has paid me a visit and informed me that his government interprets the 1977 programme as an act of deep animosity, an attack on the Soviet Union.' In this way, political countermeasures reached right to the heart of the Biennale, and Ripa di Meana handed in his resignation with a reference to 'unbearable interference on the part of foreign powers.' It seems that ambassador Rijov hit the bull's-eye. After that a good hundred or so questions were raised on the subject in the parliament and senate."

French-based authorTheodor Dalrympleexplains France and its presidential candidates to his countrymen: Sarkozy divides, Royal is like a sedative, and Bayrou? "Bayrou excites no emotions: his very absence of high profile may yet prove his greatest asset. I remember a Peruvian peasant's reply when asked why he had voted for Fujimori in the most important election in the country's history: I voted for him, he replied, because I don't know anything about him. This implies a rather pessimistic view of the moral qualities of politicians in parliamentary democracies, one that is now almost universal in countries where elections are held with any kind of regularity; but it makes Bayrou a distinctly possible future president. As for Le Pen, the word is virtually unmentionable, at least in decent company. I don't think I've ever met anyone who admitted to voting for him, and can therefore only conclude that the French electoral system in its counting is massively rigged in his favour."

In a very readable interview, Norman Davies, the most Polish of British historians, explains how he imagines a common European history book. "We should start with a small handbook to get the facts straight, before discussing different interpretations. Historians are seldom successful at selling their histories to other nations. They know too much and think too little about how this knowledge could be received abroad. Someone once said to me that only a Chinese person could write a true history of Poland, because otherwise things inevitably get tangled up in disputes over honour. A Pole, on the other hand, could write the history of Portugal."

Maarten Huygen sees one reason for the new Dutch "culture of bans" (more on this phenomenon in Germany here) in the longer life expectancies in wealthy Western European countries. "Why are there so many smokers in poor countries? Because smoking is not as harmful there. In those countries most people don't die of the consequences of tobacco consumption, but much earlier, of infectious diseases that primarily attack the elderly." But too many bans can be counterproductive. "If bans become too widespread, people's behaviour can swing about in the opposite direction. Victorian London was the world's prostitution capital. And now chaste Tehran is top spot for heroin, prostitution and alcohol. You just have to know the rules - sometimes also the unwritten ones."

Tuesday 27 March, 2012

The Republicans are waging a war against women, the New York Magazine declares. Perhaps it's because women are so unabashed about reading porn in public - that's according to publisher Beatriz de Moura in El Pais Semanal, at least. Polityka remembers Operation Reinhard. Tensions are growing between Poland and Hungary as Victor Orban spreads his influence, prompting ruminations on East European absurdity from both Elet es Irodalom and salon.eu.sk. Wired is keeping its eyes peeled on the only unassuming sounding Utah Data Center.read more

Tuesday 20 March, 2012

In Telerama, Benjamin Stora grabs hold of the Algerian boomerang. In Eurozine, Slavenka Drakulic tells the Venetians that they should be very scared of Chinese money. Bela Tarr tells the Frankfurter Rundschau and the Berliner Zeitung that his "Turin Horse", which ends in total darkness was not intended to depress. In die Welt, historian Dan Diner cannot agree with Timothy Snyder's "Bloodlands": National Socialism was not like Communism - because of Auschwitz.
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Tuesday 13 March, 2012

In Perfil author Martin Kohn explains why Argentina would be less
Argentinian if it won back the Falklands. In Il sole 24 ore, Armando
Massarenti describes the Italians as a pack of illiterates sitting atop a
treasure trove. Polityka introduces the Polish bestseller of the season:
Danuta Walesa's autobiography. L'Express looks into the state of
Japanese literature one year after Fukushima.
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Tuesday 6 March, 2012

In Merkur,Stephan Wackwitz muses on poetry and absurdity in Tiflis. Outlook India happens on the 1980s Indian answer to "The Artist". Bloomberg Businessweek climbs into the cuckoo's nest with the German Samwar brothers. Salon.eu.sk learns how to line the pockets of a Slovenian politician. In the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Navid Kermanireports back impressed from the Karachi Literature Festival. read more

Tuesday 21 February, 2012

The New Republic sees a war being waged in the USA against women's rights. For Rue89, people who put naked women on the front page of a newspaper should not be surprised if they go to jail. In Elet es Irodalom, historian Mirta Nunez Daaz-Balart explains why the wounds of the Franco regime never healed. In Eurozine, Stephen Holmes and Ivan Krastev see little in common between the protests in Russia and those in the Arab world.
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Tuesday 7 February, 2012

Poland's youth have taken to the streets to protest against Acta and Donald Tusk has listened, Polityka explains. Himal and the Economist report on the repression of homosexuality in the Muslim world. Outlook India doesn't understand why there will be no "Dragon Tattoo" film in India. And in Eurozine, Slavenka Drakulic looks at how close the Serbs are to eating grass.
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Tuesday 31 January, 2012

In the French Huffington Post, philosopher Catherine Clement explains why the griot Youssou N'Dour had next to no chance of becoming Senegal's president. Peter Sloterdijk (in Le Monde) and Umberto Eco (in Espresso) share their thoughts about forgetting. Al Ahram examines the post-electoral depression of Egypt's young revolutionaries. And in Eurozine, Kenan Malik defends freedom of opinion against those who want the world to go to sleep.
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Tuesday 24 January, 2012

Il Sole Ore weeps at the death of a laughing Vincenzo Consolo. In Babelia, Javier Goma Lanzon cries: Praise me, please! Osteuropa asks: Hungaria, quo vadis? The newborn French Huffington Post heralds the birth of the individual in the wake of the Arab Spring. Outlook India is infuriated by the cowardliness of Indian politicians in the face of religious fanatics.
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Tuesday 17 January, 2012

In Nepszabadsag the dramatist György Spiro recognises 19th century France in Hungary today. Peter Nadas, though, in Lettre International and salon.eu.sk, is holding out hope for his country's modernisation. In Open Democracy, Boris Akunin and Alexei Navalny wish Russia was as influential as America - or China. And in Lettras Libras, Peter Hamill compares Mexico with a mafia film by the Maquis de Sade.
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Tuesday 10 January, 2012

Are books about to become a sort of author-translator wiki, asks Il Sole 24 Ore. Rue 89 reports on the "Tango Wars" in downtown Buenos Aires. Elet es Irodalom posits a future for political poetry. In Merkur, Mikhail Shishkin encounters Russian pain in Switzerland. Die Welt discovers the terror of the new inside the collapse of the old in Andrea Breth's staging of Isaak Babel's "Maria". And Poetry Foundation waits for refugees in Lampedusa. read more

Tuesday 13 December, 2011

Andre Glucksman in Tagesspiegel looks at the impact of the Putinist plague on Russia and Europe. In Letras Libras Martin Caparros celebrates the Kindle as book. György Dalos has little hope that Hungary's intellectuals can help get their country out of the doldrums. Le Monde finds Cioran with his head up the skirt of a young German woman. The NYT celebrates the spread of N'Ko,the West African text messaging alphabet.read more